Fishing Trip

Well, despite the fierce squalls and stormy English weather, I ventured out at the weekend for a day by Draycote Water. I'm not what it is about fishing that I find so appealing, after all, what would compel a person to don a pair of thigh length rubber wellies, wade out into a freezing lake and spend 6 hours thrashing the waters with a fly rod in the search for slippery, smelly fish? Perhaps its the Zen-like appeal of a monotonous but nevertheless satisfying ritual; your mind focused on one simple but all-consuming task? Perhaps it's just the prospect having a tatsy Trout for your tea, or maybe it's just being outside knee deep in nature. In any case, we all caught at least 3, and at least one was over 5lb, which really is something to behold. Decided I need to get some kind of snazzy fishing hat, not the awful American style baseball affair, more a Fedora, Raiders of the Lost Ark number in which to ensnare a few dry flies and dazzle passers by with my remarkable resemblance to a sad case in an Indiana Jones hat. I've already bought myself one of those fishing waistcoats with all the integral pockets and clips (thank you e-bay) so I'm nearly there. Been having day dreams about trekking through the Colorado hills in a River Runs Through It homage, but for the time being I think I'm just going to have to settle for the lakes and rivers of Middle England.

Went to the county libarary and selected a few fly fishing classics. Unfortunately they didn't have much of a selcection, but I cherry picked a couple of hefty tomes on the art of getting up at 6am on a weekend. Also got a book on the insects of England in the hope that I might develop an aptitude for identifying which flies the fish are taking. Also learned that there is an artificial fly called a 'Booby', so called because of its two massively out of proportion polystyrene eyes that resemble the insect equivalent of a boob job. The boob job fly is, according to my reliable source, a fly suited to mid summer when larger, mature insects reach their full size and consequently end their days floating around on a lake somewhere after getting just that little bit too close to the surface. why these flying morons should choose to pursue their mates just inches from the noses of hungry trout is beyond me, but don't all creatures put themselves into all manner of dangerous situations just for the mere promise of a quick shag? A lesson for us all perhaps. There's also the 'buzzer' which kind of looks like a maggot in drag. It's a gaudy, glittery based number with a silk tail, and when paired with the booby bears a striking resemblance to a couple of good fun gals on a night out. Boob Job and Drag Maggot offer a formidable team when paired as a dropper and a point fly, and the trout just luv 'em!

Also learned that amongst fly fishermen it is considered a heinous crime to kill a Brown trout. As our native Trout, the Brown is a much slower maturing fish in comparison to its North American brother the Rainbow, although the Rainbow cannot for some reason reproduce effective in the wild, and has to be nututred in stock pools. Not sure how true this is, but that's what the 'The complete fly fisher claims.' Never kill a brown trout, to do so would be call down the wrath of god himself and he may well smite you like he did in the days of old, when by all accounts he was a much grumpier god and had a tendency to torment and kill whatever pissed him off the most. If you should catch a Brown trout it is advised that upon its release you should offer up a libation to the great Trout headed god, which usually takes the form of several pints of mild and a bag of sampy fries. mmmmm Scampy fries.

Another day where I got surprisingly little done

Considering that I got up at 8, cleaned my room, did my washing and got all papers organised in preparation for the 'read-a-thon' I somehow managed to falter and wind up pretty much wasting the best part of a day. Got two volumes of Freud to read tomorrow: Art and Literature, and The Origins of Religion, which look to be an interesting read, especially that when you consider that it's the old boy's 150th anniversary.

I'm still reading Bleak House, which I fervently recommend to anyone with a taste for Victorian literature or the Gothic tradition. Like so much of Dickens' work you find yourself sinking into a fetid, rotting vision of London with its opulent landed classes and miserable poor. I have no great fondness for the capital, so this novel feeds right into my dislike for big cities. Large numbers of people put me on edge and fill me with an unsettling feeling of paranoia; I half expect something terrible to happen at any minute, or else find myself hopelessly lost in some forsaken district miles from familiarity. I'd much rather live in a foreign city where such anxities merely blend into the general malaise of being out-of-place. For some reason I never feel the same degrees of uncertainty and anxiety in foreign cities, and actually enjoy the feeling of geographical alterity.

Went down into the cellar today looking for a bucket. I live in an old coverted retirement home with a rag-tag collection of other students. I think the building dates from the late Edwardian period, although I'm probably wayout with that speculation. Needless the say the cellar is vast and closeted. There a number of rooms which have been bolted shut with their vision panels painted over, so I assume that are home to some hideous starving monster, or perhaps the video surveillance room. The last room on the right is absolutely filled to capacity with bric-a-brac and verious other useless bits of tat that would no doubt fetch a pretty penny on e-bay. I also suspect there are rats down there.

Wasps keep visiting my window

little bastards must be building a nest near by. I remember when I first moved into this place at the end of the last summer I found scores of brittle wasps corpses picking up fluff in the small communal toilet next to my modest little room. There's an old apple tree in the garden that's seen better times, as, indeed, has the garden, now the home to countless pots and rusting pans, old bike frames minus the resalable accessories and various other pieces of junk discarded by previous inhabitants. What I mean to say is that this apple tree, which for the most part goes untended, unloved and generally forgotten, fills the long grass around the base of its trunk with any number of slowly rotting fruit, which, I'm sure, attracts every wasp for a 3 block radius. I wouldn't mind so much save I have the things and their needless seasonal aggression. One got into my room earlier and I damn near broke my leg as I tried to flee while dressing. I think it was queen, although to a phobic even the most emaciated bug would assume monolitic proportions. Suffice to say I've been unable to open the window since and have been swealtering in the forced heat of an unexpected minor (British) heatwave. To try and keep my mind occupied I read some Neruda and wrote out some notes I've been taking in a more legible hand. When it got dark I went for a walk out past where the street lights give way to the countryside and enjoyed a half hour listening to the birds down by the river.

Bad fruit and wasps. I'm convinced there's a wasp in here with me now, tired and angry just waiting to me to drop an unprotected foot onto its pulsing body. That would be my room 101, I really can't stand them. It takes a monumental amount of effort for me to re-enter a room after a wasp episode, and it would seem I'm getting worse. The only way I could deal with the one today was to prop the door open and wait for it leave before rushing into the room while waves of mild panic thumped through my body.

While I'm on the subject of nasty bugs, I saw a video clip of a camel spider the other night and it gave me nightmares of a severity I haven't experienced since I was a kid. Appartently these things live in the deserts of Iraq and as such crave shelter and the cooling reflief of anything that casts a shadow, including people, and have been known to chase after people, and presumably, camels, in an attempt to shade their bodies from the searing heat of the sun. what's more, these guys grow to quite a size and even 'scream' as they chase you. I sincerely hope I never see one of these things.

Also watced Factotum this evening, which isn't bad. Not sure whether this was a novel that needed to be made into a film, personally I thought there wasn't enough for a film, but as a short novel it worked well. Gotta love some of Bukowski's one liners though, the man certainly had that bar room philosophy down to a fine art. Anyone who's ever worked a crappy service job for terrible wages, which is probably almost everyone, will appreciate the mindset I'm sure. As for me, I've worked crappy part-time jobs for so long I get nervous when I think about careers, but part of me feels that everyone should have to work a service industry job at least once in their life, like completing your national service or something in a similar vein, as a means of preparing you for later crises of a self-conscious nature.

I'm off to bed. Good night.

Wasps keep visiting my window

little bastards must be building a nest near by. I remember when I first moved into this place at the end of the last summer I found scores of brittle wasps corpses picking up fluff in the small communal toilet next to my modest little room. There's an old apple tree in the garden that's seen better times, as, indeed, has the garden, now the home to countless pots and rusting pans, old bike frames minus the resalable accessories and various other pieces of junk discarded by previous inhabitants. What I mean to say is that this apple tree, which for the most part goes untended, unloved and generally forgotten, fills the long grass around the base of its trunk with any number of slowly rotting fruit, which, I'm sure, attracts every wasp for a 3 block radius. I wouldn't mind so much save I have the things and their needless seasonal aggression. One got into my room earlier and I damn near broke my leg as I tried to flee while dressing. I think it was queen, although to a phobic even the most emaciated bug would assume monolitic proportions. Suffice to say I've been unable to open the window since and have been swealtering in the forced heat of an unexpected minor (British) heatwave. To try and keep my mind occupied I read some Neruda and wrote out some notes I've been taking in a more legible hand. When it got dark I went for a walk out past where the street lights give way to the countryside and enjoyed a half hour listening to the birds down by the river.

Bad fruit and wasps. I'm convinced there's a wasp in here with me now, tired and angry just waiting to me to drop an unprotected foot onto its pulsing body. That would be my room 101, I really can't stand them. It takes a monumental amount of effort for me to re-enter a room after a wasp episode, and it would seem I'm getting worse. The only way I could deal with the one today was to prop the door open and wait for it leave before rushing into the room while waves of mild panic thumped through my body.

While I'm on the subject of nasty bugs, I saw a video clip of a camel spider the other night and it gave me nightmares of a severity I haven't experienced since I was a kid. Appartently these things live in the deserts of Iraq and as such crave shelter and the cooling reflief of anything that casts a shadow, including people, and have been known to chase after people, and presumably, camels, in an attempt to shade their bodies from the searing heat of the sun. what's more, these guys grow to quite a size and even 'scream' as they chase you. I sincerely hope I never see one of these things.

Also watced Factotum this evening, which isn't bad. Not sure whether this was a novel that needed to be made into a film, personally I thought there wasn't enough for a film, but as a short novel it worked well. Gotta love some of Bukowski's one liners though, the man certainly had that bar room philosophy down to a fine art. Anyone who's ever worked a crappy service job for terrible wages, which is probably almost everyone, will appreciate the mindset I'm sure. As for me, I've worked crappy part-time jobs for so long I get nervous when I think about careers, but part of me feels that everyone should have to work a service industry job at least once in their life, like completing your national service or something in a similar vein, as a means of preparing you for later crises of a self-conscious nature.

I'm off to bed. Good night.